Gates enjoyed his frequent visits to Cupertino, where he got to watch Jobs interact erratically with his employees and display his obsessions. “Steve was in his ultimate pied piper mode, proclaiming how the Mac will change the world and overworking people like mad, with incredible tensions and complex personal relationships.” Sometimes Jobs would begin on a high, then lapse into sharing his fears with Gates. “We’d go down Friday night, have dinner, and Steve would just be promoting that everything is great. Then the second day, without fail, he’d be kind of, ‘Oh shit, is this thing going to sell, oh God, I have to raise the price, I’m sorry I did that to you, and my team is a bunch of idiots.’”

盖茨很喜欢频繁地造访库比蒂诺，在苹果公司，他有机会观察乔布斯和雇员们古怪的交流方式以及乔布斯的执著。“史蒂夫用自己超级蛊惑人心的方式，宣称Mac将如何改变世界，疯了似的让人们超负荷工作，气氛异常紧张，人际关系也很复杂。”有时，乔布斯上一秒还很兴奋，下一秒就开始与盖茨分享自己内心的恐惧。“我们周五晚上出去吃饭的时候，史蒂夫还在大谈一切都很好。第二天他就一定会说，‘哦，该死，我们就要卖这玩意儿？哦，天哪，我得提高价格，抱歉这样对你，但是，我的团队都是一群白痴。’”

Gates saw Jobs’s reality distortion field at play when the Xerox Star was launched. At a joint team dinner one Friday night, Jobs asked Gates how many Stars had been sold thus far. Gates said six hundred. The next day, in front of Gates and the whole team, Jobs said that three hundred Stars had been sold, forgetting that Gates had just told everyone it was actually six hundred. “So his whole team starts looking at me like, ‘Are you going to tell him that he’s full of shit?’” Gates recalled. “And in that case I didn’t take the bait.” On another occasion Jobs and his team were visiting Microsoft and having dinner at the Seattle Tennis Club. Jobs launched into a sermon about how the Macintosh and its software would be so easy to use that there would be no manuals. “It was like anybody who ever thought that there would be a manual for any Mac application was the greatest idiot,” said Gates. “And we were like, ‘Does he really mean it? Should we not tell him that we have people who are actually working on manuals?’”

施乐公司推出施乐之星（XeroxStar）电脑时，盖茨见识到了乔布斯的现实扭曲力场。一个周五，苹果和微软团队共进晚餐，乔布斯问盖茨，施乐之星卖了多少。盖茨回答说600台。第二天，乔布斯全然忘了盖茨刚刚告诉大家施乐之星售出了600台，当着盖茨和整个团队的面，说施乐之星卖了300台。“这时，他的团队成员们开始看着我，好像在说，‘你要不要告诉乔布斯他在瞎扯淡？’”盖茨回忆，“我没蹚那浑水。”还有一次，乔布斯及其团队成员到微软参观，并在西雅图网球俱乐部吃晚餐。乔布斯开始宣扬麦金塔机器和软件将非常易于使用，根本就用不着使用手册。“他那样子就好像在说，如果有人想过Mac应用程序要配上使用手册，那这人一定是天大的白痴，”盖茨说，“我们这边就在想，‘他是认真的吗？是不是不该告诉他我们有人正在做使用手册？’”

After a while the relationship became bumpier. The original plan was to have some of the Microsoft applications—such as Excel, Chart, and File—carry the Apple logo and come bundled with the purchase of a Macintosh. “We were going to get $10 per app, per machine,” said Gates. But this arrangement upset competing software makers. In addition, it seemed that some of Microsoft’s programs might be late. So Jobs invoked a provision in his deal with Microsoft and decided not to bundle its software; Microsoft would have to scramble to distribute its software as products sold directly to consumers.

一段时间过后，苹果和微软之间的关系开始出现问题。双方最初的计划是将微软的一些应用程序，如Excel、Chart和File，打上苹果的商标，并且和麦金塔进行捆绑销售。乔布斯推崇一体化的系统，这样一来，计算机从包装盒里拿出来就能直接使用。他还打算在麦金塔上预装苹果自己开发的软件MacPaint和MacWrite。“每台电脑上的每个应用能给我们带来10美元的收入。”盖茨说道。但是这种方式令软件制造领域的竞争对手很不舒服，如莲花公司（Lotus）的米切尔·卡普尔。此外，当时微软的一些软件程序可能会迟些才能完成。因此乔布斯援引合同中的某个条款，决定不预装微软的软件；这样，微软就得努力把自己的软件直接卖给消费者。

Gates went along without much complaint. He was already getting used to the fact that, as he put it, Jobs could “play fast and loose,” and he suspected that the unbundling would actually help Microsoft. “We could make more money selling our software separately,” Gates said. “It works better that way if you’re willing to think you’re going to have reasonable market share.” Microsoft ended up making its software for various other platforms, and it began to give priority to the IBM PC version of Microsoft Word rather than the Macintosh version. In the end, Jobs’s decision to back out of the bundling deal hurt Apple more than it did Microsoft.

盖茨对此并没有太多抱怨。用他自己的话来说，乔布斯“反复无常”，自己已经习惯了这一点。而盖茨当时也在猜想，或许这种分拆实际上对微软有好处。“如果单独销售软件，我们能赚更多，”盖茨表示，“如果你愿意相信自己能获得不错的市场份额，那事情发展成这样反倒更好。”后来，微软把软件卖给了其他各种平台，并在开始为个人电脑开发文字处理软件Word后，立即停止赶工麦金塔版的Word软件。乔布斯退出捆绑销售的决定，最终让苹果比微软更受伤。

When Excel for the Macintosh was released, Jobs and Gates unveiled it together at a press dinner at New York’s Tavern on the Green. Asked if Microsoft would make a version of it for IBM PCs, Gates did not reveal the bargain he had made with Jobs but merely answered that “in time” that might happen. Jobs took the microphone. “I’m sure ‘in time’ we’ll all be dead,” he joked.

麦金塔版本的Excel软件发布时，乔布斯和盖茨共同在纽约绿苑酒廊餐厅（TavernontheGreen）参加媒体答谢晚宴。当被问及微软是否会为个人电脑开发Excel软件时，盖茨没有透露他和乔布斯的契约，只是说“以后”可能会。乔布斯拿过麦克风，开玩笑地说，“我相信，‘以后’我们都会死。”——

注释：

①沙中含硅，制造电脑的硅材料实际上是从沙子里面提取出来的。

②苹果早期的图形处理软件。